AllSides Editorial Philosophy

AllSides is on a mission to help people get the full picture so they can better understand the world – and each other.

Our editorial philosophy is guided by our aim to strengthen our democratic society. When we talk about our democratic society, we don’t only refer to politics and self-governance, but also to how free people get information, interact with each other, and make decisions.

This includes communities, large and small corporations, non-profit organizations, schools, civic groups, clubs – pretty much any setting in which people must come together to make the best decisions for them and their community.

To help people get the full picture, our novel technologies and solutions provide a broad spectrum of information, analysis and perspectives. We also offer opportunities to listen to and engage in civil, effective dialogue across differences. Together, all of us can better understand the issues and each other.

Balanced news and editorial content support a healthier, stronger democratic society.

Curating balanced news and perspectives from across the political spectrum and offering balanced summaries helps you to quickly get the full picture, see bias, avoid manipulation and think for yourself. By revealing different perspectives on issues underlying the news cycle and exposing bias and nuance in news coverage, we equip readers to decide for themselves, rather than manipulating them to any one point of view. This builds media literacy and critical thinking.

The AllSides editorial team includes people across the political spectrum. We believe an explicitly multipartisan team works better to deliver news that is balanced and trustworthy than one that might be blind to its own biases.

Many news outlets are ideologically uniform and produce biased news; the AllSides team intentionally contains diversity in thought, geography, background, and perspective to ensure we aren’t omitting or misrepresenting important perspectives.

We adhere to a special set of standards for our news curation and original content. Here are some explainers about those standards:

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Here’s how AllSides executes this philosophy and why we believe in it:

Revealing media bias and polarization helps inoculate us against it. AllSides aims to reduce dysfunctional polarization by showing balance in instances of media bias and partisanship, so we can more easily work together and solve problems.

Empowering people to get balanced perspectives helps them make their own decisions. Without exposure to different points of view, people can be manipulated into believing and acting in certain ways that can increasingly become more extreme. When people are well-informed, they are better equipped to solve problems and build “a more perfect union.”

Making the news easier to understand is crucial in our fast-paced media age. Our balanced news is clear and concise; we deliver a comprehensive look at the day's news and issues that only takes a few minutes to read.

Transparency about our editorial decisions increases trust from readers and accountability for our team. When we make a decision around editorial standards, we believe being transparent about it fuels trust. We typically write about it on our blog (and the internal debate that led to it). When we publish something that turns out to be false or misleading, we will correct it promptly and explicitly with an editor’s note.

We also have special guidelines for comments and replies on our social media accounts. Read our guidelines here.

Choosing words carefully helps mitigate harmful bias and unfair distortions. Through a perpetual process of multipartisan review and discussion, we avoid polarized word choices that tend to align with one political camp or may inflame and anger the other side. This means saying "unauthorized immigrants" instead of "illegal" or "undocumented," and leaving the words "black" and "white" lowercase when used in a racial context. Read more about these decisions and how they differ from what many other media outlets do.

Giving voice to underrepresented perspectives fuels critical thought. We don’t just focus on reflecting the most popular or majority views. We believe in taking a broader interpretation of the Overton Window, so that you can truly consider diverse perspectives and decide on the best ideas for yourself.

While you will see typical left, center, and right perspectives on AllSides, you will also see perspectives representing frameworks such as individualist versus collectivist, progressive versus traditionalist, secular versus religious, nationalist versus globalist, and everything in between. At times, this includes media coverage and perspectives from other countries that may be very different from ideas in the US.

We include stories that might be missing entirely from leading news sites, but are top headlines for a specific group or coming from alternative or dissident voices. (Still, we're not perfect. We do our best, but there may be perspectives we miss. If you think of one, email us.)

We aim to represent different sides in good faith. We also avoid posting content that advocates for slavery, genocide, or violence against people based on their identity.

Speech should never be censored unless it explicitly incites violence. Censorship often adds fuel to the spread of bad ideas. Numerous academic texts suggest people should have access to the complete spectrum of ideas on an issue in order to fully understand it. If restrictions on speech are stricter or more subjective than just outlawing explicit calls to violence, gatekeepers will inevitably succumb to bias and censor valid ideas that they happen to disagree with.

Placing extra attention on news with contrasting coverage can improve clarity and reduce the spread of “dueling realities.” It's not uncommon to see news articles about the same event that differ so widely they seem like they’re reflecting totally separate worlds — whether it be about elections, terrorist acts, culture, economics, or any other issue. Something can have tons of media attention from one side, and no attention from another side. We give stories with contrasting coverage extra emphasis to be sure you get the full picture and can understand what is really happening.

Shining light on news with common themes across divides reduces our anxiety about “the other side.” Disagreement is part of a well-functioning system, but information sources tend to overemphasize division and ignore very important news showing collaboration and common purpose. Typical news sites spotlight clashes between subgroups within our population and ignore mutual understanding, even when empathy and goodwill are demonstrated. We believe that by highlighting agreement across divides, we can be reminded of what we have in common and prevent falling into the trap of thinking the other side is the enemy. We strive to deliver better balance and a more accurate picture of the world by showing the good as well as the bad.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution is one of our society’s greatest strengths. We will always stand by the right to freedom of expression.

Updated April 28, 2026

Signed by:

CEO and co-founder John Gable

CTO and co-founder Scott McDonald

Editor-in-chief Henry A. Brechter

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AllSides Editorial Philosophy